The house that social reformer and novelist Upton Sinclair lived in during the 1940s through the '60s has come on the market in Monrovia at $1.5 million. Built in 1923, the Spanish Colonial Revival-style residence is listed on the National Register of Historical Places and is a National Historic Landmark. High arched windows, Mission Revival roof parapets and an ornate arched doorway are among the original features. French doors open off the living room and formal dining room to a covered side patio.

George H. Shellenberger, 89, former executive of the Merchants and Manufacturers' Assn. in Los Angeles and the principal volunteer of the United for California campaign fund, which encouraged the candidacies of conservatives seeking a seat in the state Legislature. He also, in 1924, helped organize the Los Angeles Community Chest.

Hendrickson has compiled 1,200 stories, quotes and bon mots about American authors, many of them humorous. Don Marquis, the creator of Archie and Mehitabel, compared publishing a book of poetry in America to "dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo."

Re "Lost in the Hollywood jungle," Opinion, Feb. 19 I had a different reaction from Ernest Freeberg to the movie "There Will Be Blood." Granted that Upton Sinclair's socialist message was not explicit, I thought that the character of Daniel Plainview and his ruthless, evil drive was a metaphor for the strengths and evils of the oil industry itself. Shirley A. Conger Corona del Mar -- Sinclair's book, "Oil!," was published shortly after the Teapot Dome scandal. We continue to celebrate a crook named Edward L. Doheny, who made a fortune from a bribe.

Most people imagine government-sponsored conferences to be dull events. But when Edward L. Menning DVM, executive vice president of the National Assn. of Federal Veterinarians, spoke at a food safety summit hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington March 31, the audience encountered the Howard Beale of the food world.

Shortly after Upton Sinclair's 1906 book "The Jungle" exposed the filth in Chicago's meat processing plants, Congress passed a law requiring daily inspections. That law halted hazardous practices like processing meat from long-dead animals. As a new report by the National Academy of Sciences points out, however, today's food safety system has itself become a jungle: an impenetrable thicket of outdated rules enforced by a dozen federal agencies.

A memorial service for James Burford, a unionist, political organizer and supporter of liberal causes, will be held July 28 at 2 p.m. in the auditorium of the Santa Monica Library. Burford, whose activism dated to the anti-poverty campaign of Upton Sinclair in the early 1930s, was 79 when he died July 12 in a Santa Monica hospital of the complications of pneumonia.

Armand Hammer flies all over the world in his private jetliner to promote his image as a human rights activist, benefactor, peacemaker and collector of some of the world's great art. He should make a flight to Dakota City, Neb., where his Occidental Petroleum Corp. operates a giant meatpacking company with sub-human working conditions ("Injury Rate Soaring, Workers at Meatpacking Plant Say," March 2). Shades of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," the expose of the meatpacking industry in Chicago early this century.